The room which Carlyon softly entered at the head of the staircase was a wainscoted apartment, hung with dimity curtains and containing a four-poster bed which stood out into the room. Under the patchwork quilt, and propped up by pillows, lay a young man, his head a little fallen to one side. One lock of his lank, dark hair was tumbled across his brow; his lips, which were almost bloodless, were slightly parted, and he was breathing short and fast. The light cast by a branch of candles on a near-by table showed that his countenance had assumed a ghastly pallor. He seemed to be sleeping.
A grizzled man, wearing the conventional frock coat, but not the wig, of a doctor of medicine, was seated by the bedside, but he looked up when he heard the door open, and at once rose and went to meet Carlyon. “I thought you would come, my lord,” he said, in a lowered tone. “Upon my soul, this is a bad business—a very bad business!”
“As you say. How is he?”
“I can do nothing for him. The knife entered the stomach. He is sinking, and I do not expect him to outlive the night.”
“Is he in possession of his faculties?”
The doctor smiled grimly. “Quite enough so to be casting about in his mind for some means of doing you an injury, my lord.”
Carlyon glanced toward the bed. “I hope he may not have hit upon the only way in which he can accomplish it.”
“He has done so, but you need feel no alarm on that score.”
“He has done so?”
“Oh, yes! But no one but Hitchin and myself has heard what he has to say. When I found what he would be at I took care to send the nurse about her business. If this had to happen it is as well it has happened where he is too well known to have the power of working mischief.”